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May 5, 2013

[Among the biggest losers could be the millions of farmers and fishermen across the border in Myanmar and Thailand who depend on the Salween, as the river is called in Southeast Asia, for their sustenance. “We’re talking about a cascade of dams that will fundamentally alter the ecosystems and resources for downstream communities that depend on the river,” said Katy Yan, China program coordinator at International Rivers, an advocacy group.]

Ke Shouyi, 47, a farmer in the Lisu ethnic group, prodded his cow to plow the

remote rural area near the Nu River in China’s Yunnan Province. More Photos »

BINGZHONGLUO, China — From its crystalline
beginnings as a rivulet seeping from a glacier on the Tibetan Himalayas to its
broad, muddy amble through the jungles of Myanmar, the Nu River is one of
Asia’s wildest waterways, its 1,700-mile course unimpeded as it rolls toward
the Andaman Sea.

But the Nu’s days as one
of the region’s last free-flowing rivers are dwindling. The Chinese government
stunned environmentalists this year by reviving plans to build a series of
hydropower dams on the upper reaches of the Nu, the heart of a Unesco World Heritage site
in China’s southwest Yunnan Province that ranks among the world’s most
ecologically diverse and fragile places.

Critics say the project
will force the relocation of tens of thousands of ethnic minorities in the
highlands of Yunnan and destroy the spawning grounds for a score of endangered
fish species. Geologists warn that constructing the dams in a seismically active
region could threaten those living downstream. Next month, Unesco is scheduled
to discuss whether to include the area on its list of endangered places.

Among the biggest losers
could be the millions of farmers and fishermen across the border in Myanmar and
Thailand who depend on the Salween, as the river is called in Southeast Asia,
for their sustenance. “We’re talking about a cascade of dams that will
fundamentally alter the ecosystems and resources for downstream communities
that depend on the river,” said Katy Yan, China program coordinator at International
Rivers, an advocacy group.

Suspended in 2004 by Wen
Jiabao, then the prime minister, and officially resuscitated shortly before his
retirement in March, the project is increasing long-simmering regional tensions
over Beijing’s plans to dam or divert a number of rivers that flow from China
to other thirsty nations in its quest to bolster economic growth and reduce the
country’s dependency on coal.

According to its latest
energy plan, the government aims to begin construction on about three dozen hydroelectric projects
across the country, which together will have more than twice the hydropower
capacity of the United States.

So far China has been
largely unresponsive to the concerns of its neighbors, among them India,
Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Russia and Vietnam. Since 1997, China has declined to sign
a United Nations water-sharing treaty that would govern the 13 major
transnational rivers on its territory. “To fight for every drop of water or
die” is how China’s former water resources minister, Wang Shucheng, once described the
nation’s water policy.

Here in Bingzhongluo, a
peaceful backpacker magnet, those who treasure the fast-moving, jade-green
beauty of the Nu say the four proposed dams in Yunnan and the one already under
construction in Tibet would irrevocably alter what guidebooks refer to as the
Grand Canyon of the East. A soaring, 370-mile-long gorge carpeted with thick
forests, the area is home to roughly half of China’s animal species, many of
them endangered, including the snow leopard, the black snub-nosed monkey and
the red panda.

Clinging improbably to
the alpine peaks are mist-shrouded villages whose residents are among the
area’s dozen or so indigenous tribes, most with their own languages. “The
project will be good for the local government, but it will be a disaster for
the local residents,” said Wan Li, 42, who in 2003 left behind his big-city
life as an accountant in the provincial capital, Kunming, to open a youth
hostel here. “They will lose their culture, their traditions and their
livelihood, and we will be left with a placid, lifeless reservoir.”

As one of two major
rivers in China still unimpeded by dams, the Nu has a fiercely devoted
following among environmentalists who have grown despondent over the
destruction of many of China’s waterways. The Ministry of Water Resources released
a survey in March saying that 23,000 rivers had disappeared entirely and many
of the nation’s most storied rivers had become degraded by pollution. The mouth
of the Yellow River is little more than an effluent-fouled trickle, and the
once-mighty Yangtze has been tamed by the Three Gorges Dam, a $25 billion
project that displaced 1.4 million people.

For many advocates, the
Nu has become something of a last stand. “Why can’t China have just one river
that isn’t destroyed by humans?” asked Wang Yongchen, a well-known
environmentalist in Beijing who has visited the area a dozen times in recent
years.

Opponents say it is no
coincidence that the project was revived shortly before the retirement of Mr.
Wen, a populist whose decision to halt construction was hailed as a landmark
victory for the nation’s fledgling environmental movement. Although he did not
kill the project, Mr. Wen, a trained geologist, vowed it would not proceed
without an exhaustive environmental impact assessment.

No such assessment has
been released. Given the government’s goal of generating 15 percent of the
nation’s electricity from non-fossil fuel by 2020, few expect environmental
concerns to slow the project, even if the original plan of 13 dams on the Nu
has for now been scaled back to 5. “Building a dam is about managing conflicts
between man and nature, but without a scientific understanding of this project,
it can only lead to calamity,” said Yang Yong, a geologist and an
environmentalist.

Some experts say that
China has little choice but to move forward with dams on the Nu, given the
nation’s voracious power needs and an overreliance on coal that has contributed to record levels of smog in Beijing and
other northern cities. Still, many environmentalists reject the government’s
assertion that hydropower is “green energy,” noting that reservoirs created by
dams swallow vast amounts of forest and field.

Also overlooked, they
say, is the methane gas and carbon dioxide produced by decomposing vegetation,
significant contributors to global warming.

“By depicting dams as
green, China is seeking to justify its dam-building spree,” said Brahma
Chellaney, a water resources expert at the Center for Policy Research in New
Delhi. Mr. Chellaney said that Beijing had also failed to take into account the
huge amounts of silt retained by dams that invariably deprive downstream
farmers of the seasonal nutrients that have traditionally replenished
overworked soil.

That the Nu has remained
untouched even as China has corralled most of its rivers is a testament to the
isolation of northwest Yunnan, a two-day drive from Kunming along a
white-knuckle road carved into the canyon walls. Every few miles are the scars
of recent landslides, a jarring reminder of the area’s geologic instability.

Despite the 2004
moratorium, work on the Nu River dams never really stopped, although Huadian,
the state-owned hydropower giant, has ramped up planning efforts since the
Chinese government removed any obstacles.

Late last month, as dusk
fell on Maji, a proposed dam site, the sound of explosions echoed through the
valley as workers, toiling around the clock, blasted test holes deep into
canyon walls. Li Jiawang, 33, a laborer, said engineers were still trying to
determine whether the rock was strong enough to support a dam several hundred
feet high.

Huadian did not respond
to interview requests, nor did the Ministry of Water Resources. But word that
the project is moving forward has already drawn many outsiders, threatening to
upend the delicate patchwork of ethnic populations. Hong Feng, 45, a migrant
from Hunan Province who recently opened a roadside shop near Maji, said that
most of his customers were dam workers from other parts of China. “We’re here
to make our fortune, and then we’ll leave,” he said.

Most of the estimated
60,000 people who are likely to be displaced from the flooded, fertile lowlands
do not have that option. They are largely subsistence farmers, and with nearly
every level patch of land spoken for, many will be relocated to dense housing
complexes like the one in New Xiaoshaba, a 124-unit project begun before the
dam project was suspended.

“We used to grow so many
watermelons we couldn’t eat them all, but now we have to buy everything,” said
Li Tian, 25, a member of the Lisu ethnic group whose family was evicted from
its land and who now works part time in a walnut processing plant.

While local leaders have
been tight-lipped about relocation plans, they have worked hard in recent years
to cast the project as a gift that will alleviate poverty in one of China’s
poorest regions.

But Yu Shangping, 26, a
farmer in Chala, a picturesque jumble of wooden houses hard by the Nu, objects
to the notion that he and his neighbors are impoverished, saying the land and
the river provide for nearly all their needs. “We’ve worked hard to build this
place,” he said, “but when the government wants to construct a dam, there’s
nothing you can do about it.”